Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the latest chapter in a series of events that have their origins in World War One. The difficult existential questions that emerged before and during this conflict still remain unresolved. Contrary to the claim that wars are not supposed to happen in Europe or that we live in the era of the End of History, the experience of Ukraine highlights the salience of the spell of the past. The failure of the West to take its past seriously has left it confused and unprepared to deal with the current crisis. Unexpectedly fashionable claims about the irrelevance of borders and of nation states have been exposed as shallow myths. The author argues that the West's self-inflicted condition of historical amnesia has encouraged it to disregard the salience of geo-political realities. Suddenly the once fashionable claims that made up the virtues of globalisation appear threadbare. This problem, which was already evident during the global Covid pandemic has reached a crisis point in the battlefield of Ukraine. History has had its revenge on a culture that believes that what happened in the past no longer matters. The Road To Ukraine: How the West Lost Its Way argues that overcoming the state of historical amnesia is the precondition for the restoration of global solidarity.
Author(s): Frank Furedi
Series: De Gruyter Disruptions
Publisher: De Gruyter
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 114
City: Berlin
Acknowledgements
Preface
Contents
Chapter 1: The Revenge of History
Chapter 2: In Search of Legitimacy
Chapter 3: Ukraine and the Enduring Salience of Nationhood
Chapter 4: Presentism and the Loss of the Sense of the Past
Chapter 5: Ukraine – A Focus for Moral Redemption
Chapter 6: Ukraine and the Myth of the Great Reset
Bibliography
